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Here no polished sculptured stela pointed to the Eternal Rest beyond; no classic marbles told, in gilded characters, the virtues of the dead; no flowery-fringed gravel-walks wound from murmuring waterfalls and rippling fountains to crystal lakes, where trailing willows threw their flickering shadows over silver-dusted lilies; no spicy perfume of purple heliotrope and starry jasmine burdened the silent air; none of the solemn beauties and soothing charms of Greenwood or Mount Auburn wooed the mourner from her weight of woe.
The so-called "Stela of the Vultures," now in the Louvre, commemorates the overthrow of the forces of the land of Upe or Opis, and depicts the bodies of the slain as they lie on the battlefield devoured by the birds of prey. E-ana-gin, the king of Lagas who erected it, never rested until he had subjected the rest of southern Babylonia to his sway.
We "did" the Pyramid of Unas, dilapidated without, secretively beautiful within. We went from tomb to tomb, lingering long in the labyrinthine Mansion of Mereruka who, ruddy and large as life, stepped hospitably down in statue-form from his stela recess, to welcome us in the name of himself and wife.
These were part of the mixed multitude that went with Israel. The dust of their going had hardly settled before a drove of hosannahing Israelites approached from the direction of the Nile. The soldier saw them without seeming to see and, moving toward the tablet, a four-foot stela of sandstone, planted himself against its inscribed face, and, resting his pike, contemplated the west.
The word stela means merely a memorial pillar or tombstone; and in this room the reflective mind will find much food for meditation. We have here the first elements of all religion brought visibly before us in the carvings the recognition of a deity, and the belief in immortality.
He could hear the rush of his own swift pulses in his ears-not the faintest sound besides. Such silence is there nowhere but in the city of the dead and at night, nowhere but in the desert. He tied the mule's bridle to a stela of granite covered with inscriptions, and went forward to the appointed place.
But the healthful leanness, characteristic of the race, had become emaciation; there was the studious unkemptness of mourning upon them, and they, who had ridden once, before the plagues of murrain and hail, traveled afoot. They were evidently journeying to On, where the benevolence of Ra would feed them. They said nothing, looking a little awed at the soldier and puzzled at the stela.
The later Ramessides ventured upon no enterprises without consulting them. They stated their difficulties, and the god replied to each question by a movement of the head. According to the Stela of Bakhtan, a statue of Khonsû places its hands four times on the nape of the neck of another statue, so transmitting the power of expelling demons.
The inscriptions run to a less or greater length according to the caprice of the scribe; the false door loses its architectural character, and is frequently replaced by a mere stela engraved with the name and rank of the master; yet, whether large or small, whether richly decorated or not decorated at all, the chapel is always the dining-room or, rather, the larder to which the dead man has access when he feels hungry.
Nor were the lesser dynasties of the Delta allowed, according to the Stela of Pianchi, to cross the threshold of the Pharaohs because they were unclean and ate fish.
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